Jeff Meyers

Gristle

  • I steal back the half-chewed pig's ear
  • from my dog's mouth and with needle
  • and dental floss, I sew it into
  • the mattress on my wife's side of the bed.
  •  
  • She mumbles in her sleep
  • and, though sometimes
  • it is the only noise in the house,
  • I cannot understand her.
  •  
  • There are slow, breathless statements that leak
  • from her darkened body. They wheeze with truth.
  • Of this, I am sure.
  •  
  • For weeks and weeks I have lain beside her,
  • pressing my fingers into my forehead, believing
  • that if I could concentrate hard enough
  • I might learn what it is she knows before she wakes.
  •  
  • Tonight, somewhere, a deafened pig
  • will discover all my wife's secrets.
  •  
  • Tomorrow I will find him
  • and eat meat for the first time in seventeen years.
© Jeff Meyers
Hereafter. Portland: Quiet Lion Press, 1999.

Editor's Note:

Some of Jeff's poems are also available thru Gumball Poetry, a non-profit literary web magazine that publishes the best poetry it can get a hold of onto the web and by carefully placing it into capsules sold in gumball machines — that's right, a machine full of delicious gum-chewing bubble-bursting poetry: www.gumballpoetry.com/.